To make a scanned PDF searchable, drop it in below, choose its language and click Make searchable — PDFNest runs OCR in your browser and adds a hidden text layer over each page, so the PDF looks the same but you can search and select its text.
Turn a scanned, image-only PDF into a proper searchable document. Everything runs locally — your file never leaves your device.
or click to choose a file
🔒 Files never leave your device
Drop the scanned PDF — it stays on your device.
Choose the document language so OCR reads it accurately.
Click Make searchable and save the new, searchable file.
A scanned PDF is just pictures of pages: you can't select the text, search it, or copy from it. OCR PDF fixes that by reading each page with Optical Character Recognition and adding an invisible text layer exactly where the words appear. The page looks identical, but now Ctrl+F finds text, you can highlight and copy, and other software can index it.
The whole process runs in your browser with a WebAssembly OCR engine, so even confidential scans never leave your device. If you'd rather just pull the plain text out instead of keeping the PDF, use Image to Text; for a text PDF that already has selectable text, PDF to Text is faster.
Add your scanned PDF above, choose the language, and click Make searchable — OCR runs in your browser and embeds a hidden text layer, then you download the searchable PDF.
No — the original pages are kept; OCR only adds an invisible text layer on top.
No. It runs entirely in your browser with WebAssembly, so nothing is uploaded.
Image to Text gives you the plain extracted text; OCR PDF keeps the PDF and makes it searchable.